Musikfest opens to jubilant crowds, hope for future

And organizers said next year will be even better, plugging the soon-to-be-built SteelStacks complex.

August 06, 2010|By Andrew McGill, OF THE MORNING CALL

Julie Spencer thought getting her family down to the platzes at 5 p.m. would be early enough to beat the crowds. How busy could it be?

Well, it's Musikfest. That means even as police dragged out the roadblocks, volunteers pulled on their headsets and downtown Bethlehem put on its Friday best, thousands were waiting with mugs in hand, champing at the bit — or corn-on-the-cob — to get this 10-day festival started.

At least the food lines were shorter, said Spencer, a Bethlehem resident with her twin 2-year-olds in tow. Hosting her sister and parents, who drove down from Long Island for Musikfest's opening, she is glad she's finally the one with the big attraction in town.

"For years, we had to go up to New York for excitement," she said, laughing. "It's nice to have them come here."

And come they did, heralding a steady stream of revelers that filled Bethlehem to the brink by evening. At 7 p.m., when head organizer Jeff Parks took the Festplatz stage to officially open the festival, some lines for fair tickets were already a dozen people deep and counting.

With a slew of local politicians and donors arrayed behind him — including Bethlehem Mayor John Callahan and U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent, rivals for the Lehigh Valley congressional seat — Parks turned the festival's "Transformation" theme into a rallying call for the soon-to-be-built SteelStacks complex, an arts and cultural campus that'll host part of next year's Musikfest at the former Bethlehem Steel plant.

He singled out Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem's donation of 10 acres to the project, naming the complex's future outdoor deck the "Sands Deck" in recognition of the gift.

"It'll make Bethlehem an even more dynamic place," Parks said. "Imagine that."

Sponsors Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Hospital, Service Electric Cable TV & Communications and guitar maker C.F. Martin & Co. were also awarded Founders Awards for their years of support. Before the ceremony, former "American Idol" hopeful and Nazareth native Tyler Grady performed "All I Have To Do Is Dream."

Plenty of people heard Parks' opening remarks under the main Festplatz tent, but thousands more streamed by outside, many armed with the ubiquitous Musikfest mug. A few who didn't have their own answered the call of mug vendor Erica Smith, who extolled her product with all the vigor of a carnival pitchman.

A Philadelphian who drove up with her daughter to volunteer at the festival, Smith was doing a brisk business, handing out nearly 40 by 7 p.m. Her daughter guessed they might sell out their mug-laden cart. Smith took it seriously.

"You know what, we just might," said Smith, whose husband is a member of Butterjive, a funk band that will perform next week.

Among the notables present was Northampton County Council President Ron Angle, who sat onstage during the fair's opening ceremony. There just isn't anything like Musikfest, he said.

"It's probably one of the biggest events that happens in the Lehigh Valley — one of the biggest that happens in the Northeast," he said. "It's great that it happens here."

And "big" was the only word Spencer's sister, Long Island resident Susanne Hoffman, could think of to describe the sprawling carnival before her. It was her first time at Musikfest, and to be honest, she was a little overwhelmed.

"I didn't know it was going to be this big," she said. "I'm still looking at everything."